As soon as the ABC dropped the trailer for its Monday night investigation of workplace culture at Seven West Media, the inevitable flurry of lawyers’ letters began. Now, The Australian has been dragged into the legal muck. And it comes back, as it always does, to Bruce Lehrmann.
Monday’s Four Corners episode exposed a series of texts alleged to have been antisemitic and offensive between former Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn and his underling at the program, Taylor Auerbach.
Taylor Auerbach leaves Federal Court with his lawyer Rebekah Giles after giving evidence in the Bruce Lehrmann defamation case in Sydney in April. Credit: Janie Barrett
Auerbach became famous for his bombshell evidence in Lehrmann’s Federal Court defamation trial that Seven allegedly paid for sex workers and cocaine to secure a tell-all interview with the former Liberal staffer. Lehrmann and Seven deny the allegations.
On Tuesday, The Oz published an exclusive interview Llewellyn gave to Sydney bureau chief Stephen Rice denying any claims of bullying or antisemitism, and trying to reframe the whole thing as a misunderstood “mutual joke”.
By Wednesday, Auerbach’s lawyer Rebekah Giles sent a concerns notice, the first step in initiating defamation proceedings, to The Australian and Rice, labelling the article a “press release” for Llewellyn and demanding a printed apology and deletion of the article.
According to Giles’ letter, which fell off a truck into CBD’s hands, the paper defamed Auerbach by imputing he dishonestly made false claims of bullying and antisemitism about Llewellyn to the ABC, that he purchased cocaine for himself using Network Seven’s credit card, and betrayed his friendship with Llewellyn by making false claims of antisemitism and bullying against Llewellyn to the ABC.
Giles’ letter also claimed the reporting was “replete with factual errors”, and said The Australian had failed to contact Auerbach for comment and failed to disclose a friendship between Rice and Llewellyn.
“It beggars’ belief that these allegations were published without any attempt to contact our client for comment,” Giles wrote.
Giles even brought News Corp boss Lachlan Murdoch into the mix.
“We remind each of you of the speech given by News Corporation chairman, Lachlan Murdoch, at the 60th birthday celebrations of The Australian,” she wrote.
“He spoke of ‘real journalism’ and its importance in a democratic society. “Journalists first and foremost report the news, accurately and without bias. We report the facts. We ask questions. We seek the truth.” On this occasion none of that occurred. It was not real journalism, it was a press statement for Mr Llewellyn.”
Auerbach, by way of Giles, demanded The Australian delete the article, publish an apology online and in print, and pay his legal costs. If not, “our client intends to commence defamation proceedings”.
CBD offers no comment as to the merit of claims made by Llewellyn or Auerbach via Giles’ pen. We did try to contact Rice and Llewellyn but they both declined to comment.
The editor of The Australian Kelvin Healey said the paper stood by its reporting “which simply detailed Mr Llewellyn’s response to serious claims of bullying and antisemitism made by Mr Auerbach and repeated by the ABC”.
“Stephen Rice has had friendly and cordial relations with both Mr Llewellyn and Mr Auerbach in the past but not to the level that required any declaration,” Healey said.
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